~ our blog about moving east & moving on

Tag Archives: work

Until about a month ago, this room — fairly removed from the rest of the house — was filled with things still unpacked from our move.

It’s a downstairs bedroom, but since we decided to make our bedroom upstairs, next to the bathroom and the closet, it stood empty. (Interestingly, it’s also the only room in the house that still has the original windows. When the window replacement guys came to measure, the door was shut to this part of the house, and they never got ordered. Actually, I kinda of like it this way, and plan to not replace them — love the white natural light we get in here… remember this?)

The past few weeks, we prepped this room to be my new workshop. I’d previously been working in a corner of the library– which is one of my favorite rooms in the house– but facing a corner and getting pieces of metal and steel wool everywhere kept the room perpetually cluttery and dirty. And most of all, I needed a place I could shut the door and be done with it.

Here’s the new space!

The work center is made of in-stock Lowe’s cabinets (we got them at a 20% off sale), Ikea laminate counters, and Ikea curtains. The paint is Valspar’s Maine Coast (not white!!), and the birch table support is from the property (and matches the drapes and shop header quite nicely, if I do say so myself.)

We’ve since moved a chair in here so Jed can work on his laptop and the pups can look out the window. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a hard-wearing rug that might look good on the floor and keep the acoustics a bit less echo-y, as well as wall art to spruce up the blank spaces.

It’s so great to have a place for everything in here, and when I clean it up — it actually looks clean and organized! It’s amazing what a real, organized space can do for your work.

It’s not even been a week since we’ve fully moved in, but things are moving ahead full steam. All the doors have been painted Autumn Gray in Olympic’s Exterior Semi-Gloss. I think they look so much more attractive and true-to-period… (and we’ve already heard comments from the neighbors!)

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We’ve also done some pruning around the front of the house and the rockwalls that border the property.

Before:

And after:

Front before:

Front today:

Rockwall out front before (from the back to the front):

You can barely see it! With help from our fantastic new neighbors Heidi and Becky, they gave us a ‘housewarming’ present and took out all the saplings! So generous!! (And they were amazing to watch at work!)

After:

Other improvements and discoveries this week:

A new (to us!) fridge! YAY!

We inherited a disgusting Almond, rusty, handle-less one when we moved in, and promptly started the search for a replacement. At $1000+ for a suitable replacement at all the Big Box stores, I began trolling Craigslist to see what I could find. I stumbled upon this 2 year-old beauty the next town over, and we went and picked it up on Saturday for (get this) — $300. Jed tells me I should not disclose this for sake of bragging, but I love sharing this example …. before you consider spending top dollar for a new appliance (or anything else) – take a look on Craigslist or Restore in your area. You might be shocked at who’s selling what (and for how much!) When we picked it up, we learned that it was a donation to a homeless shelter in the area (who already had a fridge), so they sold it for cash for the charity. We promptly put our Almond Rusty Disaster on the curb with a sign stating — FREE! She’s not pretty but works great! — and it was gone within an hour.

So that’s what we’ve been up to the past week. It’s been an exhausting one. From moving out (a fiasco which sadly, isn’t over yet due to some snafus with our Landlords) to settling in, it’s been a series of those 8pm-in-pajamas-complete-bodily-exhaustion type of days. I’ve been doing a few hours of real (money generating) work here and there, and really need to pick that back up for mailing on Tuesday.

But until then, I’m completely relishing in this fabulous progress, and the little discoveries we make daily!

WHEW It’s been busy around here… I live, breathe, wake, sleep … dream about making stamped things. The past few weeks has been all in prep for this art show/craft fair/holiday shop that took place the weekend of Thanksgiving <awesome timing!! NOT> , and so I’ve been furiously trying to keep on top of my own orders, as well as make stuff for the booth.

Because it was my first show, I also had to figure out *how* to display my stuff (harder to do it in an interesting way than say – with antiques or pillows or sweaters or… BIG things) , and then there was the business of buying of table cloths, tables, making things to sell, pricing things, printing order forms, designing and printing a display to sell my pet tags, and getting enough stuff to populate the whole thing….

Here’s how we mocked it up at home:

There were two tables- a long and a square, and one featured tags, and one … everything else.

But, upon getting there, we realized the space didn’t have a wall or anything outlining the bounds except tape on the floor, so we had to switch it up.

And, after our square table came crashing down when a leg gave out (oops!) – all we ended up losing was the cheap champagne glasses being used to display charms. S0, after the first night, I decided the booth didn’t have the ‘chi’ that motivated buyers, we re-designed the whole thing and made it into an L shape, where we sat behind and buyers could peruse upfront.

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All in all, it was good. I came out on top, I think. I didn’t do the actual dollars in / dollars out, but I’m sure we’re in the black. As far the worth of time and energy, I’m not so sure. THOUGH, we did meet a few cool people *and* scored an invite to a party that another vendor (a teacher moonlighting as a knitter) is having after the Christmas Parade in Exeter. Young childless people! Drinks! A parade! YAY! So I felt pretty good about that, as making friends was kinda the point.

And I think the best compliment was not from the customers (though those feel good too), but from the other vendors – who were WAY more Profesh than me. I had graphic designers come over and ask who did my design. I had an illustrator come over and compliment my creativity… nearly everyone who came over just gushed that everything was so original, so neat, just *so* cool. So that felt really good.

I guess it pays off not to be a knitter, in the end. 🙂

And so, now I have lots of leftover pieces that didn’t sell, but no worries – they’re going up on etsy and will be mailed off same day! YAY! I’ve already unloaded a few of these Runner’s KeyBars – which should be huge out here since everyone runs marathons.

So… back to posting. And filling orders. And… how many days until Christmas?!?